About the OIDA Image Collection

Why explore images to understand the opioid industry?

Since the beginning of the opioid crisis, cultural attitudes toward pain, disease, and drugs have been shaped by images – by photographs, charts, diagrams, maps, and other visual designs – as much as by words or numbers.

The OIDA Image Collection provides direct access to thousands of images from the UCSF-JHU Opioid Industry Documents Archive. Some images, like advertisements, were designed for the public, and others were purely for internal use. The collection juxtaposes refined corporate messaging for prescribers and consumers with unguarded internal communication, which often uses lighthearted and pop culture references despite the unfolding deadly crisis.

The images offer an unprecedented look at how opioids and their effects were represented or misrepresented to patients and prescribers, and more broadly how the drug crisis was imagined and perpetuated by the industry while it unfolded.

How to use the OIDA Image Collection

The OIDA Image Collection is meant to provide a variety of entry points to the larger document archive. Researchers can use a number of strategies to leverage the image collection:

• Browse: The OIDA Image Collection homepage provides a random selection of images every time you visit the page. Click through subsequent pages of images to find those of interest.

• Keyword Search: Use key terms to find images related to a particular research topic.

• Filter: Use page filters to browse or search within image types, broader categories or themes, and specific OIDA collections.

Each image links back to its parent document in OIDA. We encourage all researchers to review the images in their original context.

The OIDA Image Collection is just one of many resources for visualizing, teaching with, and exploring the document archive.